If Republicans Take Congress, Ctd

[One] strategy would be to go on offense: to try to get their agenda passed by streamrolling Barack Obama and the Democrats. In other words, to imitate 1995. The problem with this one is that it would be spectacularly unsuccessful, and those who remember 1995 know it. Surely that includes John Boehner, who is almost certainly no fan of Newt Gingrich. Depending on the size of their majority, it's not even clear that Republicans could agree on a budget on the floor of the House. Even worse for them, if they can pass a Tea Party budget, it will almost certainly be stopped in Senate (best-case scenario 51 Republicans including Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins aren't going to try to shut down the Department of Education). And in the highly unlikely chance that they do get agreement on a budget that could make the conservative base happy, they'll never get enacting legislation through WH vetoes. The whole exercise would leave few if any substantive accomplishments, and plenty of ugly votes for the Democrats to sift through for the 2012 campaign. Even worse, a veto fight produced by this strategy would yield a government shutdown, which might thrill Tea Partiers but would likely help Obama and produce Boehner-destroying chaos inside the Republican conference.

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